Marudhu Review – Muscle flexing for the masses

Bharath Vijayakumar

Plot: A hot headed and brawny hero who dotes on his grandmother takes on a ruthless politician.

Cast:

For a film like this to work we need to buy in the muscle power of the hero. With a sculpted physique akin a Greek God, Vishal ably fits into the shoes of the fearless Marudhu. For all the objectification of the female form that we usually get on screen Marudhu does make a few amends as the camera keeps zooming in on Vishal’s sweat soaked biceps. R.K. Suresh sort of repeats his second half act from Thaara Thappattaiand he is literally a beast on screen with those killer eyes. Kulappulli Leela is an effective choice for the pivotal grandmother’s role. But lip sync is awry at quite a few times. Radha Ravi is good as always though his role sort of fizzles out towards the end.

Crew:

Anal Arasu’s stunts are a huge asset. Stunt choreography often seems to be taken for granted these days and it is good to see some effort being spent to bring some ‘wow’ factor on screen. Imman’s score is impressive. But can we get some other lyrics other than the mandatory ‘Marudhu Marudhu’ as the theme?

Direction:

Whether a film like Marudhu works depends entirely on your sensibilities. There is a target audience for this film and for them it is almost bang on target. Where Muthiah succeeds is that he has not left the audience outside his core group scratching their heads. There is almost no redundant scene in the film which is quite tightly packed. The formula is very much evident. A hero intro signaling the arrival of God, hero glorifying dialogues at every opportune moment, song- dance routine and a violent climax. But what works is most of them are not on your face. The best example to suffice this would be the punch dialogues. Yes they would sound atrociously silly if you were to read them out to someone. But they are spoken in the film at the right ‘meter’ if that is the appropriate word. The decibel level is kept rightfully low which saves a lot of irritant for the viewer who laughs within himself for these scenes. The difference between this and laughing out loud to the silliness on screen is huge indeed. As simple as it sounds it is definitely a niche skill to achieve this. The film has quite a dosage of violence and the UA certificate does seem a tad lenient. There are innuendoes too about the hero’s masculinity related to his performance between the sheets.At least this can go above the heads of tiny tots (this is quite an assumption given the times that we live in).But what about severed limbs and hands???

Bottomline:

If Kutti Puli and Komban were your cup of tea then Marudhu is no different. Muthiah does succeed in what he had ventured into.

Rating: 2.75/5